UK police forces have been conducting hundreds of facial recognition searches secretly using the country's database of 46 million British passport holders, according to a report by The Telegraph (£) and Liberty Investigates. Last year, Policing Minister Chris Philp suggested officers access the database of passport holders to use facial recognition to identify suspects in burglaries, thefts and shoplifting. However, if the details in the report are accurate, the practice has been ongoing since 2019, with more than 300 searches taking place in the first nine months of 2023.
The revelation has raised privacy concerns from MPs, campaigners and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
A spokesman for the ICO said: "The Information Commissioner's Office is engaged with the Home Office on a number of issues related to facial recognition technology to better ensure its use in line with data protection principles. We are now engaging on the issue of the passport database in light of this additional information."
Conservative MP David Davis said: "The data on both the UK passport database and the immigration database was not provided for these purposes... For the police to act like this undermines the data relationship between the citizen and the state."
In a statement for Big Brother Watch, senior advocacy officer Madeleine Stone said the revelation is "deeply concerning especially given that this intrusive technology has no clear legal basis for its use."
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